Missing Flight 370 Raises Need for Closer Cooperation

The disappearance of MH370 while on a routine flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur March 8 has baffled authorities as contact was lost less than an hour into the trip and with no distress signal. Photographer: Charles Pertwee/Bloomberg

June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Flight 370, which vanished almost
three months ago, showcases the need for nations to collaborate
more on sharing information about aviation, Singapore’s Defence
Minister Ng Eng Hen said.

Countries already share information about ships to prevent
piracy and hijacking, Ng said in an interview yesterday.

“Is there capacity for collaboration? I think certainly
very much so,” he said. “Obviously, civilian authorities and
regulatory agencies are asking very sensible questions why is it
in this day and age do we need gaps about where planes are. For
goodness sake, we know where people are. So it’s not an issue of
cost and that’s something that needs to be addressed.”

The disappearance of MH370 while on a routine flight to
Beijing from Kuala Lumpur March 8 has baffled authorities as
contact was lost less than an hour into the trip and with no
distress signal. After the Malaysian Airline System Bhd. plane
dropped off civilian radars, the country’s military detected an
unidentified radar target headed west across the country.

A proposal with options to allow better aircraft tracking
will be drafted by September by the International Air Transport
Association, the group said in an e-mailed release today.

IATA, which represents 240 airlines, is working on the
issue with the United Nation’s International Civil Aviation
Organization, it said in the release issued from IATA’s annual
meeting in Doha.

‘Friendly’ Aircraft

On the day the Boeing Co. 777-200 aircraft vanished, air-traffic controllers and Malaysian Air struggled for hours to
understand what was happening even as the military watched the
plane appear to reverse course. The initial confusion was
disclosed in Malaysian government documents released last month
as part of the preliminary investigation into the world’s
longest search for a missing plane in modern aviation history.

Malaysian and Vietnamese controllers traded phone calls and
relayed a tip from the airline that the jet may have gone to
Cambodia, while the military detected an unidentified target,
the papers show.

The aircraft was categorized as “friendly” by the radar
operator and therefore no further action was taken at the time,
the country’s Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said in a
statement. Hishammuddin was informed of the tracking about nine
hours after civilian officials lost contact.

Stepping Forward

After Vietnam air traffic controllers reported failing to
reach Flight 370 on many frequencies, Malaysian controllers
began querying authorities in Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore,
according to documents.

Singapore dispatched its C130 Hercules aircraft to the
search area to look for debris after talking with the Malaysian
defense minister, Ng said. A submarine rescue vessel with a
submersible sonar tracking device was also sent to help with the
hunt in the Gulf of Thailand, he said.

Investigators have concluded that the plane flew south
toward Australia and crashed in the Indian Ocean after running
out of fuel. After finding no evidence so far, authorities have
decided to take a pause in the search to map the seabed.
Australia’s government has issued a new tender seeking private
companies for the search.

(An earlier version of this story was corrected to change a
word in the minister’s quote in third paragraph.)